The Blog of Rachel Pollack

Do you want to be a writer? Do you worry people will ask you “Where do you get your ideas?”

Now you can answer: “Rachel Pollack’s blog!”

I get lots of fun ideas for stories with very little chance I will get to actually write them. So, I’m offering them here for anyone might want to take and run with them. The first begins with a title, the rest are just the ideas–you’ll have to make up the titles for those.

1. A Priest, A Rabbi, And A Minister Walk Into A Crime Scene.
The title says it all, doesn’t it? This would be a mystery series, with each story featuring our dauntless trio of clerical amateur sleuths as they battle villains, unruly congregations, and meddlesome hierarchies. Future titles could include A Priest, A Rabbi, And A Minister Walk Into A Kidnapping, etc. This could be a fun project for three writers, each one taking the sections of their appropriate religion–then switching around in later books.

2. “Oh wow,oh wow, oh wow.” Those were Steve Jobs’s last words. Was he seeing all the possibilities to transform heaven with new tech? Imagine a story in which Jobs is stunning the angels, and even God Hirself, with cool devices–until he comes up against Walt Disney. A new war in Heaven!

3. People watching TV notice very strange transmissions breaking into the signal. It turns out that these are television signals from another world. Scientists, linguists, and cultural anthropologists begin a frantic study to make use of this great opportunity. Then they notice odd things about the transmissions–they’re all commercials. All we know of this world is distorted through the lens of TV advertising. And further, they discover that our transmissions are breaking through into their world as well. But only commercials.

4. A time travel series about people who repair breaches in time. Sample titles:
Making Good Time
Time Made Good

5. A man who takes a shamanic workshop and becomes a vessel for the weather. If he gets drunk and falls into a swimming pool a huge rainstorm develops. If he gets sick and has the chills a deep freeze takes over his town. Once he realizes this, the responsibility becomes unbearable. To break a drought he has to drink two gallons of water a day. To prevent a blizzard he has to spend an entire day in a sauna.

6. A safety box belonging to a mysterious old man is left unclaimed after his death. The bank is about to drill into it when a woman bursts in saying she’s his ex-wife and only just heard of his death. By no means must they open that box! But unfortunately she lacks the paperwork and even though they give her six hours she can’t stop them. Turns out the old man was a wizard who trapped a demon in that box, like the bottle in the old Arabian Nights story. Now it’s unleashed, and can the woman trick it back into a new box before the world is destroyed?